Home Alone refers to a number of video games created for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, Amiga, personal computer, Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy. They are all based on the movie of the same name.
There are multiple versions of the game and each features a different style of gameplay, but all share the same plot and roughly the same objective: Kevin McCallister is left home alone when his family goes on vacation. He must prevent Harry and Marv, the 'Wet Bandits', from burglarizing his home, using various household objects as traps and/or weapons. Each version of the game is an example of the trap-em-up genre, which also includes games like Heiankyo Alien, Space Panic, and Lode Runner.
The Home Alone Genesis and Game Gear titles feature a slightly different plot. While the games still revolve around Kevin’s battle with the Wet Bandits, he instead must protect several houses in his neighborhood while waiting 20 minutes for the police to arrive (40 on higher difficulties). During the game, the Wet Bandits drive around the neighborhood in their nondescript van until they decide to enter one of the houses. Kevin can travel by sled (in top-down view) to the various houses and do battle with the Bandits as they proceed to rob whatever house they are in (in a 2D platformer/side-scroller format). When this happens, Kevin must fight them off with different weapons and guns in order to fill up an empty Pain Meter; when he does so, he will have saved that particular house and cause the Bandits to retreat. During this time, however, another meter will be filled as the Bandits proceed to rob the house, and if Kevin is unsuccessful in stopping them (thereby allowing meter to be filled), the house will become “flooded” (Marv leaves the water in robbed houses running as a calling card) and he will be unable to reenter the house again. If all the houses end up flooded, the game is over.
Kevin starts with a simple BB gun, but he may also finds different items he can combine to make various makeshift weapons that have different effects depending on the ammunition (glue, snow, light bulbs, sound waves, coals, etc.) and gun type (rifle: flies the farthest and fastest; bazooka: flies slower and at a shorter distance; launcher: fires the weapon in a small, short arc; mortar: fires the weapon in a high, but short arc.) Each gun has a specific amount of ammunition, but collecting other ammo items after the completion of certain guns will refill the ammo supply. If he wishes, the player may disassemble any of Kevin's weapons (aside from the BB gun) into its component pieces, so that other ammunition types may be utilized. Should Kevin enter a house before the Bandits, he can lay down several traps throughout the house (keeping with the game’s movie tie-in theme) to help increase the Pain Meter and make protecting the house easier. If any of the Bandits end up capturing Kevin, he will be strung up on a wall while they continue robbing the house, but he can fidget and drop from the wall to continue defending the house.
The game starts with one difficulty level, but a harder one can be unlocked. In the hard difficulty, Kevin must wait for 40 minutes for the police to arrive and the bandits’ van will drive faster from house to house, but he will be able to create newer and more powerful guns to fight them off.
Amanda Dyson of Mega said the game was a wasted film license, and was a 'grotesquely over-priced and pathetically under-developed mockery of a game'. MegaTech said the game would only 'appeal to junior players'.